Tried some new games with my wife. First was a physical copy that arrived today: Paris: La Cite de la Lumiere, which had stuck in my mind ever since Tom’s review and I finally went ahead and ordered. It was fun! We both enjoyed it. I really like the sometimes-imagined sense of pressure you have from the other player, because you’ve got all of your moves planned out, but you need to determine the priority based on how likely your opponent is to make a move that will throw a wrench in the works.
Then we played Fort on TTS, and I’m glad we tried before we buyed. I’m not generally a fan of deckbuilders but I prefer when they have other stuff going on (like the race in Automobiles), and I thought this would have enough outside of the deckbuilding part of it, but it really doesn’t. It just feels like a deckbuilder, with extra difficulty in keeping track of what your deck is good at because of your opponent stealing your cards. I really like the theme and the presentation, but neither of us liked the gameplay.
Gosh, I wish it would get to my part of the world already. I ordered it almost immediately after Tom’s review, and it’s still in limbo (along with a few other games I’m waiting on – I guess I can probably blame Covid).
Back to the Future: Back in Time X 2. After 4 plays, still without a win. Not even getting close to a win. I’m not sure I can even get this game to the table again with either of my groups. The randomness of it makes you feel like theres no point in even trying. You can carefully get George and Lorraine together, and on the next movement card they each run off in different directions. Then there is the Biff problem. Every dice has two custom faces, two wildcard faces, and two Biff faces. So, on every roll, its a one in three chance of rolling a Biff, and it just screws up anything you are doing. And most movement cards also have Biffs. Out of 24 cards, 8 have one Biff symbol, 12 have two Biffs, and 4 have no Biffs. We thought of fighting Biff, which would at least slow him down, but again, one in three chance per die of getting a Biff and negating any successes you may have rolled. It seems that a lot would have to go right to win the game.
Its a Wonderful World , did really badly, struggled to get thru it, didnt really enjoy it
Calico , lost by a single point! But to be honest, the tiles came out pretty well for me to even get that close. This was the first play with my other group, they seemed to enjoy it. They thought it would be a light breezy game about cats, but then the AP took hold a bit.
Just finished up my first game of Troyes Dice and it’s marvelous. Toss the theme in the trash, it’s there to help make sense of the scoring grid and that’s about it. Twice a day the markets get razed and rebuilt for some reason (surely there’s historical context here but it’s not even hinted at in the manual, so for now, because middle ages). Each day that passes, the market rondel rotates one space. This makes for an ever-morphing colour space for your dice (translucent, they take on the colour of the tile on which they’re placed), on top of the variability of the dice rolls themselves.
This is a point salad roll and write, with a huge interconnected pad full of scoring opportunities. You have 16 decisions across the entire game, so efficiency really counts. Making “link” combos are super important, and the game is taunting you constantly with the option of protecting columns or going for points now and risking catastrophe later. Furthermore, the classic “buy your end game scoring conditions” option is here, but tuned such that you need to take huge risks to net the biggest points.
It’s slick to play, and it’s super, super juicy. I’m going to need to laminate some sheets for this one.
[EDIT] I squeezed in a second game, this time with the included Banquets and Raids tiles (touted as a mini expansion but let’s face it, it’s a little module). I’ll use this every time; including them adds an extra layer of escalation to the game, as some tiles provide boons initially, but flip to (permanent) banes as the game moves on. I improved my score by a whopping 1 point.
No need to toss it in the trash! I thought the dice game did a brilliant job of abstracting the abstractions of the boardgame into a cohesive R&W. They really need a title that draws on the game of Troyes without insinuating any connection to the theme of Troyes… but that’s difficult with a one word title.
The original theme may have all but gone, but it keeps a lot of the feel of the boardgame, albeit with losing some of the interesting aspects (no stealing dice) in the process of turning it into a miniature solitaire game. It’s a great achievement.
Last night with local games group: Battle Sheep, aka Hey That’s My Field. (I already own Small Star Empires, aka Hey That’s My Space Fish, though I’ve barely played it - I should do something about that.) Interesting ways of producing replayability without randomness, in this case laying out the board before the game proper begins.
Also Stone Age which I don’t really love but one of the other regulars does.
It’s neat to hear that the link to its mama is strong. I have very little knowledge of “Big Troyes”, so I’m looking at this purely on its face. Either way, the gameplay is really strong here, and I think it’ll really start to get juicy from turn one after a few more games.
A difficult win for Sprawlopolis this morning with Looping Lanes, Superhighway and Go Green (that one was hard with the focus on roads)
I need to do some catching up as I’ve played a bunch of games recently.
The solo mode for Iwari is a nice puzzle that I lost at full speed on my first try. I just didn’t have the right pacing and ran out of tents and totems to play which triggered the final scoring and the AI easily won three areas. I love how the game helps you along with markers to make it clear and obvious what has been counted. Definitely need to try that again maybe first with the default map. And I haven’t even tried expeditions and worship yet.
Then I played another round of CloudAge to find out how good the game gets with everything in it. So the campaign brings in legacy tiles that are added to the map and change it a little bit which is neat. The story is on cards and includes a bit of choice in how to proceed (I’ve only played two chapters). The second game I mistakenly played with all the available actions because rulebook and story were not on the same page regarding when “planting” was entering the game. Even after two games I am still not sure how good this game is. It is not bad. But usually I am immediately sure if I like a game. This–like Faiyum–is one of the very very few I cannot immediately decide. Weirds me out. But I am curious how the story will proceed and it’s not too complex…
Then we played a round of my secret santa gift Watergate which I won as the journalists while my partner as Nixon needed just one more momentum to make it to the safety of re-election. He thought the game was unfairly biased towards the journalists but as is often the case it is probably unfairly biased to people who’ve played a lot of M:tG. I thought for the longest time that I was unable to win, even after I impeached him I didn’t quite see the winning tile placement.
This was followed by a round of Star Realms which I lost as I committed to the blue Trade Federation early and my partner overran me with the green Blobs against which I’ve never won unless I went red and destroyed a lot of cards in the trade row. But red didn’t come up much and I hate buying the same color as my opponent. This was the first of the games we selected for the 12 games of Christmas challenge inspired by @COMaestro.
Today I finished my 10th game of Nusfjord for the 10x10 challenge. Nusfjord is just a lovely solo and is by far the quickest of all the “big” Rosenbergs I have. I think I may eventually prefer Hallertau over this as an overall game but I like the solo mode with the alternating colors so much in Nusfjord. The general setup of Hallertau feels a bit cleaner with just one central board and I can see myself getting it to the table for multiplayer easier than Nusfjord, especially since the name Hallertau allows me to bait my friends with hops and beer (I have next to no hops of ever getting Feast to the table for multiplayer, there’s 1 person that might maybemaybe want to play this with me).
For the 10x10, I have to play 3 rounds of Root, 2 of Wingspan and 3 of Clank! and 2 of Pandemic Legacy 2 which won’t be happening. Root and Wingspan are solo-able. The others not so much.
So that’s it for the past few days. I hope to be playing more games over the holidays.
Played 18AL (Alabama), 18GA (Georgia), 18TN (Tennessee). While 18MS (Mississippi) is more of an intro game, the other 3 aren’t. I found myself underwhelmed, playing these 3 from the same designer. The stock market is too short (like me) and nothing ground breaking with the map nor private companies or. From the ones I’ve played from Mark Derrick, 18Mex remains the one to bother playing.
Out of all the “1830-style” games, I have 1882: Assiniboia , which is enough. And 18CH which is longer but that’s fine.
It’s certainly a clever wee deduction game. The app doing a lot of the heavy lifting is great the only question mark is over the very limited player interaction. This might be due to playing it with only 2 people. Off to BGG to see how much or how little information to share on your turn.
Apart from my mum getting lost in how to claim a route. I really enjoyed it. Would like to play with more than two though as there’s not much competition with two.
Weirdly I also don’t feel the need to own an 18XX now as this does a decent job of being a train game.
Games today, smaller turnout and for less time than I’d hoped so no play of Feast for Odin and The Norwegians. But I shan’t complain:
ORC, first game my opponent wasn’t clear on the rules for tie-breaking conflicts, so I won that. The second was very close but he out played me toward the end. Great fun in a tiny playtime.
KLASK, first time I’ve had a player really struggle to grasp this one. Dexterity games may not be their bag…
The Quest for El Dorado, this one was terrific. Worked just like I imagined and is super interesting and satisfying in a way deck builders often fail at. I’ll need more plays but this is already looking like a new fave.
Welcome to the Dungeon, close game but in the end one player outlasted the rest of us. I also realised I’ve been playing wrong - apparently the last player into the dungeon chooses which character you play as for the next round! (rather than it staying the same as I’d been playing…)
New York Slice, this game was decided by one player grabbing the Seconds special and eating all the slices he didn’t need for scoring for mad points.
Truffle Shuffle, this was really good, a strong follow-up to Point Salad. That game might be a bit better, but this one is interesting and tense while being very simple to play. Could’ve done with more coins though - we were constantly making change.
I enjoy this game, but there isnt a lot of player interaction (beyond being a race to find the planet). You can deduce what other players may be up to, for example if someone scans for asteroids, and then places a theory, you could guess that its probably for an asteroid. Or, they could be bluffing of course…
I’m breaking protocol with a “planning to play” entry. I’m getting away for a few days, and intending to do a bunch of solo gaming. The list of things to play has become a bit large/ambitious while writing this, though, so I probably shouldn’t actually pack all of this! : )
Judge Dredd: Helter Skelter: The Dark Judges (of course)
Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth and/or The Lost Expedition
Had four quick games of Flipology while waiting for the children to be proper asleep before doing some gift wrapping for tomorrow. Lovely simple card game, played at 2 with my partner, but I can see it as a serious contender for travelling of as filler between bigger games. Plays easy, really simple to teach and with enough depth of strategy, even if simple, to get a lot of replays. Will have to try it with the children, but I can see the animals being a good hook for them.
Great game, I play this pretty regularly with the family and it is always close and always fun. I used to play it quite a lot with new gamers too when I ran a regular game night… in the before times.
Try Big Momma Troyes if you ever get the chance. It’s a classic! To summarise, it’s about assigning dice to red/yellow/white parts of the city, with each part providing a different ability/bonus, with a semi-coop of defending against the invading marauders. As long as one or two players fight the marauders everyone’s fine, but if they aren’t handled, they will attack cascading down from the starting player.
So the dice game reduces that down pretty well, with the exception of:
Turning the semi-co-op fighting marauders into random hoopla. Necessary for the solo player boards.
No ‘dice auction’, just different cost dice. Again to eliminate player interaction for solo playerboards.
The abilities of each area in Big Momma are randomised (card sets for each area - fixed throughout a single game), so part of the game is working out how to play with the different available options. I guess in the dice game the marauders kinda emulate this by excluding parts? Same result of preventing a perfect solution that can be replicated every game.
I knew Black Angel shared some DNA with Troyes but I don’t think I realized just how much!
[EDIT] A couple more games of Troyes Dice, once last night with my partner (who really enjoys it and, expectedly, dominated), and once solo this morning where the raid phases found every single little hole in my defences! My investment in protection was mostly squandered and, having invested hard, so too was my final score. Oof!
(I have next to no hops of ever getting Feast to the table for multiplayer, there’s 1 person that might maybemaybe want to play this with me).